stuparr935 Loc: Dallas, Texas area

Actually Carbonite will not delete a file(s) you delete on your local hard drive for a period of time. You will be able to restore any of your local deleted file for at least a month (sorry don’t remember if it is 30 or 90 days before Carbonite will delete your locally deleted files from your account, but you do have time to restore accidently deleted files.)

dnathan

Quick related question: would there be a problem keeping my full backup drive in my car? I live in a Philadelphia PA suburb & we have "normal" 4 seasons. Thanks!

Jeffers

Amen. I mentioned using OneDrive which is a wonderful storage system for use with multiple devices but to use it as a backup is a fool's errand. That said, an individual OneDrive account may be backed up as easily as a C: Drive storage system, eliminating the need to back up multiple computers.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 excellent advice.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If you do that, I would allow plenty of time for the drive to acclimate to the house temperature (like 12 hours minimum) before use. Changing temperatures and humidity quickly can cause condensation on the platter which can cause failure. In the commercial IT space, using good practice, drives are usually left to “acclimate” for at least 24 hours before use after being moved into a building from outside. If a system needs to be moved and used immediately, it is transferred in a climate controlled truck.

Rab-Eye Loc: Indiana

Jerry, I just looked at their website. It's a little hard to navigate. Do they sell external drives, or cases for their internal drives?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Can be mounted in an external case. Actually a good idea -that way you can pick the drive type and insure you buy a good quality case with its own power supply and fan cooling.

Jim Bob

Well I did not interpret the original post to request information on a drive that can be configured to be external. Whether it's a "good idea" is really not the issue in my opinion.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Well, if you’re going to purchase an external drive to store your valuable data, it is a very “good idea” to pick a reliable one, and the best way to do that is to know the quality and specifications of the drive you’re getting as well as how well it’s cooled, which drives reliability. One of the downsides of WD prepackaged external drives (and other manufacturers) is you don’t know which of their drives it is - it may be the cheapest, least reliable drive they make or a red NAS rated drive - no way to know unless you assemble the combination yourself, which is a trivial matter. In my opinion (from 25 years designing and selling storage), the best most useful advice you can give/get is to use the best drive possible and put it in a good fan cooled case, and the drive Jerry suggested has one of the lowest failure rates in the industry.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I have a 2T back-up hard drive made by Seagate, that is about 10 years old now and it works just like it did, the first day it was hooked up. So, I'm a happy camper with that drive, the fact that it cost me just 60 bucks just adds icing on the cake!

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

I have WD, have worked out fine so far. An 8T and a 2T, used for different reasons. All photos go on the 8T, which is set up to mirror the drive so really only 4T, and all backups go on the 2T.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

Computer security experts say you should always maintain a minimum of three (3) forms of backup for your photographs. At least one should be off site to protect against loss in the event of fire or natural disaster. The Cloud is not the best choice because your photos will be under the control of a second party that may have technical problems, financial failure or bankruptcy, sale to an unreliable party or may hold your data hostage to rising costs. My system provides both on and off site redundant backup that is completely under my own control.

My system consists of the following:

1) All storage of photographs is external to the computer’s (iMac) internal drive.

2) Downloads from the camera, editing, final product and primary storage is on a 5Tb Western Digital My Book drive.

a. Each shoot is stored in a folder identified by job name and date.

b. Within each folder are three sub-folders labeled “RAW”, “Edit” and “Final”. All uploads are made to the RAW folder and only
copies of the raw files are copied to the Edit folder for editing. The final output that may include JEPG, TIFF, etc. files are
transferred to the Final folder.

3) The complete primary storage drive is backed up to a Drobo 5-drive RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). This allows multiple backup copies of the data along with offsite backup. In addition, the Drobo’s firmware automatically corrects any data transfer errors and insures that all backup drives have matched data. The RAID consists of five Western Digital Red Drives, which are designed for this type of service and have an excellent reputation for reliability. Furthermore they are “hot swappable” which means they can be safely inserted and removed from the Drobo without removing power from the system.

a. Although the Drobo can hold up to five drives, only four are in the unit at any given time. Three of the drives are never removed
and provide the basic redundancy.

b. The fourth drive position is used for the offsite backup. Two drives are used for that purpose.

4) Once a week or as necessary, drive 4 is removed from the Drobo and taken to the bank. Drive 5 is removed from my safe
deposit box and drive 4 takes it place in the box.

5) Drive 5 is inserted into the Drobo where the data from Drives 1, 2 and 3 are automatically copied to it.

Pauld

Perhaps a nit, but carbonite is a backup system for your computer. By definition, it is a copy of files currently on your computer. So if you delete a file, Carbonite will delete it as well (it actually keeps them for 30 days). You are thinking of an archive system, that would keep files that are not on your computer. But your archive system then is the primary system, and you would need a backup for those files.

SnapitSteve

Crashplan

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I use Fantom External Pro 7200 RPM drives by Micronet. I have 2 3TB, 1 4TB and 1 6TB. I've used Fantom externals for 5 years.
https://www.fantomdrives.com/best-external-hard-drives/fantom-drives-g-force-3-professional-usb-3-0-esata.html

I also use Acronis True Image for backup software.
Acronis has saved my "butt' more than a few times.
Mark